Category: Science

Let’s make this clear from the beginning: no, I am not a shill for “MonSatan.” Yes, I am a scientist who does her fair share of genetic manipulation in the laboratory, albeit with herpesvirus DNA and specialized bacteria, not agricultural foodstuffs. Still, it saddens and frustrates me when I see a major corporation basically…

Last year was a banner year for measles in the United States. The CDC’s provisional number of measles cases for 2014 stands at 644, the most since measles was declared eliminated from the USA 14 years earlier.1 Over half the states in the union experienced measles. It appears that 2015 is picking up right where…

Some 310 million miles from wherever you may be reading this article — give or take 10 million miles — the Philae lander successfully reached its destination, comet 67P, after a ten-year journey through space aboard the comet chaser, Rosetta. Rosetta, as you may have assumed, is named after the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of an ancient stele written…

I got my flu vaccine this week, have you? Flu season in the United States lasts from October through mid-May.1 Now is the perfect time to get vaccinated against the flu. There are 13 (!!!) different types of flu vaccines approved for use in the USA.2 Vaccines can differ by method of administration (intramuscular injection,…

I caught the chickenpox when I was in elementary school. It was circa 1980. There was not yet a vaccine against chickenpox, and the disease was spreading through my school classroom at a fast pace. I remember sitting in the gym for an assembly, and my friend next to me was picking at a blister-like…

To date, there have been over 1,050 deaths attributed to Ebola virus infection and disease (Ebola hemorrhagic fever) in the 2014 Western Africa epidemic, and the World Health Organization (WHO) believes these numbers to be underestimated.1 There is no cure for Ebola, and treatment is limited to supportive care consisting of hydration, blood transfusions (if needed)…

Earlier this month, the first two cases of locally-transmitted chikungunya virus in the contiguous United States were reported in Florida.1 Chikungunya virus has been previously identified in people in the US (on average, 26 individuals per year are diagnosed with the disease), but all were in travelers who had contracted the it outside the country….

Viruses are incredibly complex little buggers. The lab I work in studies just one aspect of herpesviruses (how they enter cells to infect them), and this involves just a handful of the many proteins that make up the virus. We have made great strides over the years to figure out herpesvirus entry, yet there is…

Measles was declared eliminated as a circulating disease in the United States in the year 2000.1 However, importation of measles into the U.S. from other countries where the virus remains endemic continues to be a threat. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that there have been 288 confirmed cases of…

Approaching Valentine’s Day of 2010, NPR featured a love story called “Carl Sagan And Ann Druyan’s Ultimate Mix Tape.” Druyan, who co-wrote the original “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” in 1980 as well as its newest iteration, discussed the making of the “Sounds of Earth” and how she and Sagan fell in love. It is the most romantic story…

“Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” has been a terrific educational and thought-provoking resource. It is precisely the kind of show that television needs. However, ratings have dropped on the show, the original series only aired for one season and, as of March, host Neil deGrasse Tyson said he had no plans to return for a second season,…

According to an infographic posted on Huffington Post last year, porn sites averaged 450 million unique visitors per month. The average visitor spent roughly 12 sweaty, fist-pumping minutes on porn sites somewhere around 7.5 times per month. The infographic also stated that 70% of men and 30% of women viewed porn. To further extrapolate those statistics, 30% of men and 70% of…